The Attack on Afghanistan

Post 9/11/01 Attacks on Nations

Following the September 11th attack on New York City
and the Pentagon,
the Bush administration delivered an ultimatum to the
Taliban leadership in Afghanistan,
demanding that they either hand over Saudi-born dissident
Osama bin Laden, or face attack by the United States.
Bin Laden had been living in Afghanistan as a guest of the
Taliban since 1996.
The Taliban agreed to try bin Laden in the Afghan Supreme Court
if the United States provided evidence of bin Laden's involvement
in the attack.
The Taliban's position was articulated by Ambassador to Pakistan
Abdul Salem Zaeef, who stated:

Our position is that if America has evidence and proof, they should produce it.
We are ready for the trial of Osama bin Laden in the light of the evidence.
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The Bush administration appeared uninterested in any option other
than attacking the impoverished but strategically important central Asian nation.
Addessing the U.S. Congress on September 20, 2001,
President Bush, describing the alleged perpetrators of the attack
as the "enemies of freedom," stated:

Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?'. They hate our freedoms -
our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote
and assemble and disagree with each other.
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In his speech, Bush asked people to make two leaps of faith:
first, to assume that the attackers were who the administration
said they were in spite of an absence of evidence, and second,
to assume that the attackers' motives were those imputed to them
by the administration.
Bush asserted:

We know exactly who these people are and which governments are supporting them.

On the same day, the FBI was expressing doubts about the identities
of the alleged hijackers.

The air attack on Afghanistan began on October 7,
with an intense night-time bombing attack by U.S. and British forces
hitting at the heart of the city of Kandahar.
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Bush Administration Found Guilty of War Crimes

In March of 2004, a citizens' tribunal in Tokyo
found U.S. President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes
in the attack on Afghanistan.
The tribunal, consisting of five judges,
reached a unanimous conclusion.
The judges are all professors of international law,
and represent four nationalities, with
one from each of India, the United Kingdom, and the United States,
and two from Japan.
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The British lawyer who served on the tribunal,
Robert Akroyd,
described some of the ways in which the U.S. military ran
afoul of international law.
He noted that Bush,
who claimed the military actions were in self-defense,
failed to discriminate between
legitimate objects and civilians, using
"indiscriminate weapons such as the Daisy Cutter
(a huge conventional bomb), cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells."